


You're My Umbrella

by DjDangerLove



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Gil Arroyo Acting as Malcolm Bright's Parental Figure, Protective Gil Arroyo, reposted after I deleted it months ago
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:47:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26128273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DjDangerLove/pseuds/DjDangerLove
Summary: Gil promised to always be there for Malcolm, but sometimes he has to remind the kid he meant it.
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright
Comments: 3
Kudos: 42





	You're My Umbrella

There are moments in every man’s life when he becomes blind and deaf.   
Blind to the things he should see. Deaf to the things he needs to hear. For Gil Arroyo, these moments happen few and far between, but the remnants of them haunt him every day. Sure there are cases he couldn’t solve fast enough, cases he couldn’t solve at all, but it’s the big one he did piece together that keeps circling back around to remind him he’s just like everyone else. He’s been blind and deaf when it mattered most and regained it all when it couldn’t matter at all. 

Today, he’d woken up before the sunrise, watched it climb over the skyline on his way into work but while the sun reached its point in the sky, Gil had never made it to the precinct. His phone rang at forty-one minutes past five in the morning and by six he was standing in an abandoned warehouse down by the docks with an irate murder suspect and a gun-bearing Malcolm Bright pointing it in Gil’s direction. 

The suspect had been playing games with them all along the case and it seems he saved this one for last. Malcolm either kills Gil or both of them leave in a body bag. 

All those years ago when his life had been in the hands of the elder Whitly, it had been Malcolm who saved him. Then, just a ten year old kid plagued by things that everyone in his life told him weren’t true. Now, a man desperate enough to want to believe them but too smart to ever be able to. 

A lot of people think that’s why he’s never lied to Malcolm. That he knows he’d never get away with trying and while that may or may not stand true, it isn’t the reason he has always been honest with the kid. The reason lies within a memory from a time when Bright had been staying with Gil and Jackie. He often stayed extended weekends with them after The Surgeon had been captured and on one particular weekend about two months after they’d met, Bright had been standing out in the backyard, clothes drenched with the pouring rain but shoulders burdened by a heavier weight. 

“What are you doing out here, kid?” Gil had asked, tucked up underneath an umbrella even as he’d crouched down in the mud. 

“I like the sound of the rain.”

“Well, did you know an umbrella makes it louder? It just so happens I’m holding one... want to come under and test it out?” 

Malcolm had studied him for a long time before nodding once and stepping under the umbrella. He stood awkwardly close to Gil who kept his crouch with one knee in the mud and after a few moments the boy’s body seemed to relax so suddenly that Malcolm leaned against Gil’s other leg. 

Gil offered a small upturn of the corner of his mouth, “Can I tell you something?”

The young boy nodded even while tilting his head back to stare at the canopy above them. 

“I’ve never really liked the rain. I guess it’s too quiet for my taste. It overpowers everything else.” 

Malcolm lowered his gaze to Gil at that and frowned.  
“I don’t think so. If you listen hard enough you can hear where everything is based on the sound the rain makes when it lands. But you’re umbrella is too loud. It makes it impossible to tell... like it’s hiding everything. Lying.” 

Gil sensed the shift in topics before it happened, but his heart clenched all the same when the kid pointedly looked him in the eyes. 

“Malcolm.... alright, look this umbrella....it’s shielding us from the rain, right? Protecting us from getting wet. It might be doing other things that we don’t particularly care for like...making my hand cramp from holding it up for so long or catching in the wind, but it’s doing the one thing it was meant to do and that’s protecting us from the rain.”

“So when people... _some people_ don’t tell you every thing, every detail or even tell a little white lie, well... sometimes they’re just like this umbrella.”

“Trying to protect me.” The kid whispered while curling his hand around the stem of the umbrella above Gil’s hand. 

“Doing the one thing,” Gil agreed and moved his hand to cover Malcolm’s, “I was meant to do.”

The boy stared at Gil’s large hand blanketing his. “I’ve had somebody lie to me my whole life and it...hurts. I don’t want it to hurt anymore so I think...I wish somebody would just tell me the truth.”

It was then, heart twisted and in pieces in the pit of his stomach, that Gil swore to himself that he’d be honest with this boy for the rest of his life. 

Gil squeezed the kid’s hand, “Then that’s what I’ll do. Whatever you need, Malcolm, I’m always going to be here for you.”

It took several moments but the kid finally looked up with watery eyes and nodded, “Like an umbrella.”

—————

Gil has always kept his promise even on days like today when the sun is heating up the city without a cloud in the sky. Sunbeams cast a haze across the warehouse, blanching Bright’s face to a sickly hue as he trembles amongst dust particles. 

“Bright. Look at me,” Gil orders, hands splayed out to the side. “Just keep your eyes on me, kid, okay?”

Bright clenches his jaw, fingers going lax against the handle of the gun in his quivering hand. He stares at Gil, eyes wide and teary the way desperation always appears on him when he lets it. 

“Good. That’s it, kid. Now, listen to me. Really listen to me when I tell you that it’s okay.”

“No!”

“Bright,” Gil keeps his voice calm and even, accepting of a fate that lets him keep his promise to this boy. “I’ve never lied to you. I’m not going to start now, so I’m telling you that it’s okay. I’m the umbrella, remember?”

“No, no, no,” Malcolm chants, head twisting manically. “This isn’t protecting me. This isn’t that!”

Gil watches the kid tremble underneath the verbal pressure of the murder suspect standing up above them in the rafters demanding he make a choice.

“It’s always gonna be that. I told you, kid, I’m always going to be here. You trust me, don’t you?”

Bright’s face crumples with affirmation but he nods anyway with a barely there, “Always.”

“Then trust me right now when I tell you it’s okay.”

The man above them yells at Malcolm, twists his leverage that much deeper and Gil nods once at Bright. “It’s gonna be okay, Bright.”

“I’m sorry,” his boy says and pulls the trigger. 

————

The rain falls in heavy sheets, painting the window in moving particles distorting the city. It’s not nearly as loud as it should be even with Bright’s ear pressed against the glass, but it makes it easier to hear Dani walk up behind him. 

“Hey,” she greets as she leans against the window frame beside him. “You ready?”

“No,” he answers honestly. “I’ve never...I mean it’s ...”

“Yeah, he told me the story once. That time he broke his leg running down a junkie. He said Jackie brought you in to see him and you puked on the sheets.”

Bright tries not to laugh, but it spills out of him anyway, comes as easy as, “He told the nurse the jello they gave him was spoiled and it turned his stomach so I wouldn’t feel embarrassed.” 

“He told me that, too.” Dani smirks while pushing away from the wall and nudging her head towards the adjacent hospital wing. “Come on. You need to see him.”

Walking into the room, the cold air nearly steals his breath but the steady beep of the heart monitor helps him keep a rhythm of breathing he feels would otherwise be difficult. 

“Thanks, Dani,” Gil says as the woman leaves them, then rolls his head along his pillow to look straight at Bright standing rigid in the corner. “What’s up, kid?”

Bright avoids his gaze, finds his folded hands much more interesting and shakes his head. 

“Come over here. Let me look at you.”

The kid forces a laugh and shuffles closer, but bumps into the hospital bed when Gil beckons him closer with a wave of his hand. “You look peaked.”

Bright does laugh at that. “That’s what you have to say. I looked peaked? I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not. How are you supposed to look when you shoot your...mentor four inches above the heart so a murder suspect doesn’t kill you both?” 

“Hey. It worked out didn’t it? I told you it would.” 

“Ah, the infinite wisdom of Gil Arroyo prevails once again.”

“Don’t go forgetting it.”

Bright looks at him and wraps his hand around the bed rail, fingers quivering in a way Gil is use to seeing. “You know I won’t.”

Gil reaches for the kid’s hand, pulse of meter sitting bulky on his hand but he still manages to squeeze trembling fingers. “We’re alright aren’t we?”

The boy’s face twists in confusion but never stops staring at their connected hands. “Of course.” 

“What I asked you to do-“

“Gil, stop. It’s fine. You were right, it worked out.” 

Bright tried to remove his hand but Gil tugged on his hand until he held it completely, elbow propped on the bed rail. 

“You know I was only doing what I had to do to protect you, don’t you? Tell me you do.”

Bright grins at him and it spreads easy across his face, his hand relaxing just enough to put a small pressure on the back of Gil’s hand. “I know. You’re my umbrella.”

Gil tugs on Bright’s hand until he’s bent far enough over the bedrail that Gil can pat him on the side of his face. “You’re my kid.”

So sure, there are moments in every man’s life when he becomes blind and deaf.   
Blind to the things he should see. Deaf to the things he needs to hear. But a man needs neither to shield his son from the rain.


End file.
